
£7yr 

ft 03 



E 445 
.N54 H5 
Copy 1 



STORY OF THE SLAVE 



Paper read before the Monmouth County Historical Association on Octo- 
ber 30th, 1902, wherein is given some account of 



Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 



WITH NOTES 



Concerning Slaves and Redemptioners in other States 



By Alfred M. Heston, of Atlantic City, member of 
the New Jersey Historical Society 



CAMDEN, N. J.: 

SINNICKSON CHEW & SONS COMPANY. 

1903. 



STORY OF THE SLAVE 



Paper read before the Monmouth County Historical Association on Octo- 
ber 30th, igo2, wherein is given some account of 



Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 



WITH NOTES 



Concerning Slaves and Redemptioners in other States 



By Alfred M. Heston, of Atlantic City, member of 
the New Jersey Historical Society 



CAMDEN, N. J.: 

SINNICKSON CHEW & SONS COMPANY. 

1903. 



Two Copies R< 

FEB 21 1903 

\ Copyright tntry 
$ LASS 0> XXc. No. 

iT/ 1 // 

COPY B. 



Copyright, igo3, by A. M. Heston. 



Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 



SLAVERY existed in America long before 1619, when 
the Dutch traders brought their cargo of human freight 
to Jamestown. The Aztecs of Mexico enslaved not only 
their enemies taken in battle, but those of their own nation 
who were convicted of theft and other crimes. "By a stern 
law," says Prescott, "every tax defaulter was liable to be 
taken and sold as a slave." The same authority adds that 
slave dealing was an honorable calling among the Aztecs. 
After the discovery, in 1492, the unsuspecting natives of the 
West Indies, race and stock of the Aztecs, were seized by the 
Spaniards and put to work in the mines.* 

Las Casas, whose father accompanied Columbus on his 
first voyage, and who was honored with the title of "Pro- 
tector of the Indians," outraged at the exhibitions of cruelty 
in Cuba, proposed to relieve the natives by sending out Cas- 
tilian laborers and importing negro slaves trom Africa. As 
a youth in Spain. Las Casas had been attended by an Indian 
page whom his father had brought with him from Hispan- 
iola. Thus the uncompromising advocate of freedom for 
the Indian began his career as the owner of a slave. t 

Although Las Casas succeeded in substituting the negro 
for the Indian as a slave, he did not prevent Indian slavery, 
especially in the English colonies on the mainland, where, 
for man}- years. Indians, taken prisoners in war. were held 
as slaves. In a few cases, too, the whites who landed along 



*An account of this phase of American slavery is given in Fiske's 
Discovery of America, Vol. II. 

fPrescott's "Conquest of Mexico," Vol. 1, Bk. 2, ch. 8. 

(3) 



the unsettled coast could not resist the temptation to entice 
the Indians aboard ship, and then sail away to sell them 
in the settlements elsewhere.* 



*Lawson, historian of North Carolina (pp. 73, 74), writing of those 
New Englanders who sought to plant a colony at the mouth ot Cape 
Fear River, in 1660, says they were driven off by the Indians, whose 
children they had sent north under pretext of having them educated. 
The Indians suspected that their children had been sold into slavery, 
and became so hostile that the whites were glad to leave that part of 
the country. _ 

In a report made to the States-General of Holland, in 1616, Cap- 
tain Hendrickson speaks of having discovered and explored "certain 
lands, a bay and three rivers" (the Delaware, Schuylkill and ^ Maurice 
Rivers), in a small yacht of sixteen tons burden named the "Onrest," 
built at Manhattan. In this report to the States-General he further 
describes some of the productions of the country, and says that he 
bought three of the native inhabitants from the Mingoes and Mohicans, 
who held them in slavery, and for whom he gave in exchange kettles, 
beads and merchandise. 

An instance of the capturing of Indians for slaves is found in the 
account of the Tuscarora war, in North Carolina. When the attack 
began, in 171 1, Governor Hyde, of North Carolina, sent to the Gov- 
ernor of South Carolina for aid. He directed his agents there not to 
fail to represent "that great advantage may be made of slaves, there 
being many of them, women and children — may we not believe three or 
four thousand ?" The Indian allies, coming from South Carolina to aid 
Hyde, took back a great number of slaves from the conquered people 
in North Carolina. The Indians, said Colonel Pollock, as soon as they 
had taken the fort and secured their slaves, marched away straight to 
their homes. Tom Blount, chief of a tribe of friendly Indians in that 
section, also secured his captives for slaves. He proposed to attack a 
certain small tribe, in which he thought there might not be enough 
people to give each of his own warriors an Indian slave, and he accord- 
ingly asked the North Carolina Council to promise some reward to 
those who might not happen to have slaves allotted to them. Most of 
the Indian slaves taken in this Tuscarora war were carried to other 
colonies, a good many going to Massachusetts and Connecticut. They 
were sold for about ten pounds each. More than 700 of them were 
captured and sold before the war was ended. 

Strachey, in his "Travayle into Virginia," speaks of a story that 
he had from the subjects of an Indian chief, Eyanoco, who lived at 
Ritanoe, somewhere in the region to the south of Virginia, and who 
had seven whites who had escaped out of the massacre at Roanoke, and 
these he used to beat copper. "It is not improbable that there is a 
shadow of truth in the statement, although the details, must be ficti- 
tious," says Dr. John Spencer Bassett, in his monograph on slavery and 
servitude in North Carolina. "That the Indians of the colony later on 
did enslave the whites whom they could take in their waters, or who 
were shipwrecked off the coast, we know from the preamble of an act 
of the Assembly about 1707. This form of white servitude left no trace 
in the life of the colonv." 



With the white man enslaving the red through greed of 
gain, small wonder is it that the red man enslaved the white, 
the motive in the latter case, however, being revenge, rather 
than profit. The first slaves that we hear of in North Caro- 
lina were white people, whose masters were Indians; seven 
whites who had escaped from the massacre at Roanoke in 
1 71 1 being enslaved by the Indians. Per contra, the first 
slaves that we hear of in New Jersey were Indians and 
their masters were white people. During the first half of 
the seventeenth century, the Swedes on the Delaware and 
the Dutch on the Hudson enslaved members of the various 
tribes thereabout.* 

The Dutch settlers of Xew Amsterdam, also, after the 
manner of the times in New Jersey, tried to enslave the 
aboriginal red men, but the task proved both harassing and 
unprofitable. Indeed, this attempted enslaving of the In- 
dians by the Dutch burghers led to such trouble that the 
burghers, in self defence, built a wall across the lower end 
of Manhattan, whereby the liberty-loving red man was kept 
from driving the slave-catching white man over the bat- 
ten- and into the bay. The site of this wall is now the 
money mart of New York. 

The Dutcht and Swedes, first settlers on the Hudson and 
Delaware, respectively, finding Indian slavery impossible, 
brought negroes to our province from the west coast of 
Africa; but while slavery was one of the social customs of 

*In 1640 it was enacted in Massachusetts that there shall never be 
any bond slavery in that province, unless it be the lawful captives take 
t war-," or such as shall willingly sell themselves. In New Jer- 
sey there was no war of extermination, as in Massachusetts, and no 
captives taken in "ins* wars." but the Indians — a few it may be — were 
enslaved from the beginning, and half-breeds, the off-spring of Indian 
mothers, were likewise enslaved. As late as 1797, in a habeas corpus 
proceeding. Chief Justice Kinsey delivered an opinion before the Su- 
preme Court, in which he said. "The Indians have been so long recog- 
nised as slaves in our law thai it would be as great a violation of the 
rights to establish a contrary doctrine at the present day as it would be 
in the case of the African, and as useless to investigate the manner in 
which they originally lost their freedom." 

fSee page 40 of this monograph. 



these two colonizing nations, it did not become a recognized 
system until the advent of the English in 1664.* 

The earliest recorded instance of ownership of negro 
slaves in New Jersey is that of Colonel Richard Morris, of 
Shrewsbury, who, as early as 1680, had sixty or seventy 
slaves about his mill and plantation. It is said that ten 
years later nearly all the inhabitants of northern New Jer- 
sey owned slaves. t 

Queen Anne's instruction to her cousin, Lord Cornbury, 
Governor of New Jersey, shows clearly a desire to encourage 
the importation of African slaves, and the Governor was 
specifically instructed to report annually the number there- 
of. A statute passed in 17 14, and repealed in 1721, impos- 
ing a duty of ten pounds on every slave imported for sale, 
was called forth by the desire to stimulate the introduction 
of white servants, a similar statute in Pennsylvania having 
had that effect.t 

Small as she is and large as was her interest in slavery, 
New Jersey was surpassed by Rhode Island — "little Rhodie" 
— in the magnitude of her importations from Africa. 

In 1770 Rhode Island had as many as 170 vessels engaged 
in the slave trade, and it is undoubtedly true, as Samuel 



*A certain Conningsmarke, a Swede, popularly known as "the long 
Finne," having been convicted of stirring up an insurrection in Dela- 
ware, as part of his punishment, was sentenced by the Council at New 
York, in 1669, to be sent to "Barbadoes, or some other remote planta- 
tion, to be sold." After having been kept prisoner in the "Stadt-house 
at York" for a year, the long Finne was duly transported to Barbadoes 
and sold into slavery. — Smith's History of New Jersey, pp. 53, 54. 

fAlthough begun during the proprietary period, previous to 1702, 
slavery in New Jersey did not become a recognized system until the 
time of Queen Anne, when there was a steady increase in the number 
of slaves until 1776, with special forms of trial and punishment pre- 
scribed in the criminal law. This was also the period of a strong aboli- 
tion movement among the Friends, ending in 1776. with the denial by 
Friends of the right of membership in their society to slaveholders. 

IQueen Anne was "willing to recommend" to the Royal African 
Company that the province "may have a constant and sufficient supply 
of merchantable negroes, at moderate rates," and the Governor, on his 
part, was instructed to "take especial care" to secure prompt payment 
for the same. 



Hopkins says in his "Reminiscences," that Rhode Island 
was mure deeply interested in the slave trade than any other 
colony in New England. There is a record of one good 
old elder, whose ventures on the African coast always turned 
out well, who returned thanks on the Sunday following the 
arrival of a slaver into the harbor of Newport, in these 
words: "An overruling Providence has been pleased to 
bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted 
heathen, to enjoy the blessings of a gospel dispensation."^ 

Sir John Hawkins, who, as is well known, commanded 
the first English expedition to Africa for slaves, issued to 
his captains the following orders: "Serve God daily; love 
one another; preserve your victuals; beware of fire; keep 
good company." It lias been said that "Hawkins sailed on 
the ship Jesus, with faith as serene as if he had sailed on a 
crusade." At one time they were so long becalmed at sea 
as to face starvation, but the pious slaver says in his notes, 
"Almighty God, who never suffereth his elect to perish, 
sent us the ordinary breeze." 

The infamy of this slave traffic was attached quite as 
much (o the people of the North as to those of the South. 
In fact, the well-to-do deacons and church members of New 
England controlled the business. The history of that time 
reveals Peter Faneuil with one hand piling up profits from 
his immense slave trade, while with the other he was erect- 
ing a cradle of liberty in Boston, and dispensing private and 



*Originally the right to enslave the negro was hased on the fact 
that lie was a pagan. 1 1" such were the case, the early American colon- 
ists asked themselves, would not conversion enfranchise him? It was 
a matt< r of doubt in the minds of the settlers, and hence they hesitated 
to allow their negroes to become converted. Maryland, in 1671, en- 
acted that conversion or baptism should not be taken to give freedom 

laves. In 1677, an English court gave an opinion that converted 
slaves were "infranchised." James Adams, a clergyman of the Estab- 
lished Church, who was in North Carolina in 1709, complained because 
the masters would "by no means permit their slaves to be baptized, hav- 
ing a false notion that a Christian slave is by law free." _ A few of the 

oes, he said, were instructed in the principles of religion, but they 
were not baptized. [See note on page 40.] 



8 

public charity. New England vessels,* outward bound., 
were laden with rum, which was traded to African chiefs 
for a cargo of prisoners, and these, with other blacks whom 
the ship captains might chance to steal, were taken to the 
southern ports or to the West Indies and traded for molasses. 
The molasses was in turn brought to New England and 
converted into rum, wherewith to buy another cargo of 
.negroes in the dark continent. In 1750, Newport carried 
on an extensive business' of this character. Three hundred 
distilleries, we are told, were in operation, and the tonnage 
of the vessels lying at the town's wharves exceeded that of 
New York. Airs. Stowe, in her tale of "The Minister's 
Wooing," has portrayed in the most interesting manner the 
awakening of the New England conscience to the sinful- 
ness of buying and selling human souls. t Perth Amboy 



*The Fame, a noted slaver and privateer of Newport, had a keel 75 
feet long. The space between decks, where the slaves were kept during 
the time the cargo was accumulating (three to ten months), and while 
crossing the Atlantic, was usually a room as long and as wide as the 
ship, but only 3 or 4 feet high. The men were ironed together, two by 
two, by the ankles, but the women and children were left unironed. The 
irons on the men were fastened to the deck or ceiling. With the in- 
creasing demand came a change in the methods of obtaining cargoes. 
Originally the trade was confined to captives in war, but subsequently 
raids were resorted to, and free men were kidnapped and sold in the 
most heartless manner. Treachery and murder were common practices 
resorted to in order to secure a few slaves. After the trade was out- 
lawed, in 1807, cruisers were stationed on the African coast to stop the 
work of the slavers. The slave ships came to the coast disguised as 
honest traders, and watched for a day when the coast was clear ; then 
they got their slaves quickly on board and sailed away. To enable a 
ship to load quickly, depots were established at convenient points and 
pens were built by setting tree trunks into the ground to make a high 
fence. In these the slaves were held by the hundred; sometimes more 
than a thousand w.ere imprisoned in one pen to await the arrival of a 
ship. Kidnapping and raiding increased until the market price of slaves 
fell as low as from $12 to $20 a head. The demand continued because 
the hardships of slave life killed off the slaves more rapidly than slave 
children were born. The blockade of the Confederate ports by the Fed- 
eral ships in 1861 ended slave smuggling. 

fThe question of slavery being before Congress on April 19, 1784, 
Thomas Jefferson, who was opposed to the buying and selling of human 
beings, proposed to exclude slavery from all the Southern and West- 
ern States admitted after 1800. The effect of this would have been to 



was New Jersey's chief port of entry and blacks were to be 
seen there in goodly numbers, many of them freshly im- 
ported and still bearing their tribal marks. Adults sold for 
from 40 to 100 pounds, and a child of two or three years 
brought from 8 to 15 pounds.* 

A society for the abolition of slavery was formed in New 
Jersey as early as 1786. The constitution, after mention- 
ing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the uni- 
versal rights of men/' concludes with the statement that 
"we abhor that inconsiderate, illiberal and interested policy 
which withholds those rights from an unfortunate and de- 
graded class of our fellow creatures." This society, of 
which Joseph Bloomfield was its one-time president, was 
influential in obtaining legislation for the abolition of slavery 
in New Jersey. t 



confine slavery to the southeast corner of the country. The measure 
was lost in Congress for lack of a single vote. Had that New Jersey 
delegate, John Beatty, been present, whose illness kept him at home that 
day, the "history of this country on the slavery question might have 
been wholly changed. Air. Beatty would have voted in favor of Jeffer- 
son's measure. 

-In 1744 a hill to prohibit the importation of slaves was rejected by 
the Council of New Jersey, which declared that even the mere discour- 
agement of importation was undesirable. The Council maintained that 
tin- colony at that time had great need of laborers. An expedition to 
tin- West Indies had drawn off many inhabitants, and the privateering 
profession had attracted many others. For these causes wages had 
risen so high that "farmers, trading-men and tradesmen" only with 

■ difficulty were able to carry on their business. In 1 76 1 the ques- 
tion of a duty on slaves was under discussion. The free importation 
of negroes had then become a source of inconvenience. A large num- 
ber of slaves were "landed in this province every year in order to be 
run into New York and Pennsylvania," where duties had been establish- 
ed. Furthermore, New Jersey had become overstocked with negroes. 

fjohn Woolman, a Quaker, native of Mt. Holly, first suggested the 
idea of abolishing the slave trade in America. He published many tracts 

nst slavery and argued against it publicly, making long journeys to 
talk to individuals on the subject. In the course of a visit to England 
he visited York, where he died of smallpox on October 7, 1772. Dr. 
Stephen 1'.. Weeks, in "Southern Quakers and Slavery," says the first 
man in America to preach immediate and unconditional emancipation 
was Charles Osborn, born in North Carolina, and Levi Coffin, of "un- 
derground railway" fame, a native of the same State. 



10 



An act prepared by this society and passed by the Legis- 
lature in 1804, provided for the gradual abolition of slavery 
in this State. Every child born of a slave after the fourth 
day of July of that year was to be free, but should remain 
the servant of the owner of the mother until the age of 
twenty-five years, if a male, and twenty-one if a female. 
The right to transfer this "servant" to another person was 
guaranteed by the act.* 



*The slave population of New Jersey at different periods, according 
to the census returns, was as follows : 

In 1790 11,423 

1800 12.422 

1810 10,851 

^20 7.557 

1830 2.254 

1840 674 

1850 236 

i860 18 

In i860 there were four slaves in Hunterdon county ; one in Mid- 
dlesex ; one in Morris : two in Passaic : nine in Somerset and one in 
Warren, making a total of eighteen. Hannah Mandeville, formerly a 
slave, and the last of her kind in New Jersey, died at Newark, on No- 
vember 10, 1902. She was past ninety years of age. Mrs. Mandeville 
was a widow, her husband having died thirty-two years previously. Be- 
fore the war she belonged to the old Condict estate in Hudson county. 
When the war freed her she went to Pompton Plains with her husband, 
Anthony Mandeville, and lived there a number of years, afterward 
moving to Newark. 

A free negro was entitled to vote in New Jersey during the early 
years. The suffrage was not confined to whites by the Constitution 
adopted in 1776. Article IV states that "all inhabitants of this colony, 
of full age, who are worth fifty pounds * * * and have resided 
within the country" for twelve months are entitled to vote. Not until 
thenew Constitution was adopted, in 1844, was the elective franchise 
limited to whites. In 1793, as proof of the illegality of an election for 
determining a site for the Middlesex County Jail and Court House, it 
was stated that "a negro man was admitted to vote, who had no legal 
residence, and his declaration that he had been manumitted in another 
State was received as sufficient proof of his being entitled to vote." 
The implication here is that a negro, able to show clear proof of his 
freedom, and having a legal residence, was entitled to vote. 

It was a part of the universal law of slavery that a slave should not 
testify against a white person in the courts. In North Carolina, when 
charged with complicity with Teach, the pirate, known as "Blackbeard," 
in 1719, Tobias Knight urged, in his defence, that the prosecution had 
introduced the evidence of four negro slaves, "which by the laws and 
customs of all America ought not to be examined as evidence." Not 
satisfied with denying them the right to testify against the whites, the 



II 

Under the operation of this act and a further act passed 
a few years later (1820) it was supposed that slavery in 
New Jersey would gradually disappear, but both laws proved 
ineffective. Still later (1846) another act was passed, 
abolishing slavery, but even this did not bring about the 
complete emancipation of the slaves. This last "abolition" 

North Carolina, in 1741, enacted, that if any negro, mul- 
or Indian, bond or free, be found to have testified falsely, he should, 
without further trial, be ordered by the court to have one ear nailed to 
the pillory and there to stand one hour, at the end of which time that 
ear should be cut off: then the other ear should be nailed to the pillory, 
and at the end of another hour be cut off as the former. Finally the 
luckless felluw received thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, "well laid 
on." 

In 1604 a Monmouth county justice sentenced a negro named 
"Caesar," convicted of murder, as follows: "Thy hand shall be cut 
off and burned before thine eyes. Then thou shalt be hanged up by 
the neck until thou art dead, dead, dead: then thy body shall be cut 
n and burned to ashes in a fire, and so the Lord have mercy on 
thy soul, Caesar."— "Story of an Old Farm," by Andrew D. Mellick, 

P- 22 > 

Mr. Andrew D. Mellick. in his interesting "Story of an Old Farm," 

give-, a very g 1 description of slavery in Somerset county. The 

granted their holidays and enjoyments. In the week fol- 
lowing Christmas they generally gave a party, to which the respectable 
colored people of the neighborhood were invited. The whole week was 
one - festivity, and but little work was expected of the blacks. 

in, the day of "general training" (usually in June) was another 
• holiday for these slave-. This drill of the militia was regarded 
kind of fair and was a time of great sociability. The family ne- 
attended in a large wagon, taking with them root beer and 
ginger cakes b 1 offer for sale. 

To whs 1 xtenl negroes in New Jersey took part or aided in the 
on it is difficult to determine. A law of 1780, for the recruiting 
of the remainder 01 New Jersey's quota of troops for the service of the 
United States, forbids the' enlistment of slaves. The following year a 
law for the same purpose repeat-; the prohibition. Yet slaves from New 
rved, in various capacities, both the State and the Federal Gov- 
ernment during the war. Two instances are recorded when a slave was 
unfitted by an act of the Legislature as a reward for faithful ser- 
in the Revolutionary cause. In the manuscript notes of a septua- 
irian, quoted by Mickle in his "Reminiscences of Old Gloucester," 
published in [845, we are told that he (the septuagenarian) was in the 
,t Red Bank on the Delaware on the morning of October 23, 1777, 
the day after the battle, wlnn he saw that a number of the men under 
Coloni were black- and mulattoes. 

By the slave law of 1714 any "negro, Indian or mulatto slave," mur- 
ir attempting the death of any freeman, wilfully murdering 
any slave, committing arson, "rape on any free subject." or mutila- 
tion of any free person, is to suffer the penalty of death. The man- 



12 



law substituted apprenticeship for slavery, and every slave 
became an apprentice for life, bound to his owner, unless 
voluntarily discharged from service. 

Twenty-two years ago (1880) that distinguished' Jersey- 
man, Hon. Garret A. Hobart, native of Monmouth, and at 
that time a member of the State Senate, introduced and 



ner of death, however, is not specified, but is to be such as the "ag- 
gravation or enormity of their crimes," in the judgment of the jus- 
tices and freeholders trying the case, "shall merit and require." The 
testimony of slaves was admitted in the trials. When a slave was 
executed, the owner received for a negro man thirty pounds and for 
a woman twenty pounds, the money being raised by a poll tax upon 
all the slaves in the county above fourteen years of age and under fifty. 
A form of execution frequently chosen was burning at the stake. 
At Perth Amboy, in 1730, a negro was burnt for the murder of an 
itinerant tailor. In Bergen county, in 1735, a slave, "Jack," was 
burnt. He had beaten his master, had threatened to murder both his 
master and his master's son and to burn his master's house, and when 
arrested he tried to kill himself. In Somerset county, in 1739, a negro 
was burnt for brutally murdering a child, attempting to murder the 
wife of his overseer and setting fire to his master's barn. In 1741 
two negroes were burnt for setting on fire several barns in the neigh- 
borhood of Hackensack. The New York negro plot of 1741 caused 
many executions by burning as well as by hanging in New Jersey. 
—Whitehead's "Early History of Perth Amboy," pp. 318-320; Weekly 
Post Boy, July 2, 1750; New Jersey Archives XII, p. 652. 

In 1734 a rising near Somerville was feared. Certain negro quar- 
ters some miles remote from Colonel Thomas Leonard's dwelling-house 
had become a rendezvous for the negroes of the neighborhood. The 
slaves stole from their masters provisions of various sorts, which they 
carried to their place of meeting and feasted upon, sometimes in large 
companies. It was claimed that at one of these meetings some hun- 
dreds had entered into a plot to gain their freedom by a massacre of 
the whites. A belief on the part of the negroes that they were held 
in slavery contrary to the positive orders of King George appears to 
have been an element contributing to the excitement. According to the 
plan of the conspirators, as soon as the weather became mild enough 
so that living in the woods might be possible, at some midnight agreed 
upon, all the slaves were to rise and slay their masters. The build- 
ings were to be set on fire and the draught horses killed. Finally, the 
negroes, having secured the best saddle horses, were to fly to the In- 
dians and join them in the French interest. Suspicion of a negro plot 
was first aroused by the impudent remarks of a drunken slave. He 
and another negro were arrested, and at their trial the above details 
were brought out. The insurrection, believed to be threatening, was 
suppressed with considerable severity. About thirty negroes were ap- 
prehended; one of them was hanged; some had their ears cut off, and 
others were whipped. Poison was found on several of them. — New 
Jersey Archives XI, pp. 333, 340. 



13 

had passed a bill which removed from the statutes the last 
vestige of slavery in New Jersey. An act permitting the 
master of a slave to take him or her to the public work- 
house, to be whipped had remained on the statute books 
for many years, contrary to the laws of the United States, 
and it was this obsolete law which was thus repealed by 
Mr. Hobart.* 



That delirium of the New York people in 1741, known as the "Ne- 
gro 1 y," appears to have spread to some extent into neighbor- 
ing New rersey, also. Mr. W. A. Whitehead thinks that this panic 
caused many executions in New Jersey. In one day seven barns were 
burned ai Hackensack; an eighth caught fire three times, but fortu- 
nately was saved. It was believed that these were set on fire by a 
combination of slaves, for one negro was taken in the act. The people 
of the neighborhood were greatly alarmed and kept under arms every 
night. '1' d with committing the crime were burned. 
In th 'it Book of the .Indices and Freeholders of E^sex county 
are the following items: "June 4. I/4L Daniel Harrison sent in his ac- 
count of w 1 carted for burning two negroes." * * * "February 

25. 1741--'. Foseph Heden, acct. for wood to burn the negroes Mr. Far- 
rand paid allowed 0.7.0. Allowed to Isaac Lyon 4 curry for a load of 
wood to burn the first negro. 0.4.0."— "A Study of Slavery in New Jer- 
sey," by 1 lenrv S. Cooley. 

A law of 1754 provided that in the borough of Elizabeth, servants 
and slaves accused of "any misdemeanor or rude or disorderly behav- 
ior," being brought before the Mayor, may be "committed to the work- 
house to hard labor" and receive corporal punishment not exceeding 
thin the system was established throughout the State. 

"Any stubborn, disobedient, rude or intemperate slave or male ser- 
vant" m ig the world, ou-e to endure confinement and 
labor, at the discretion of a Justice <<\ the Peace. The master paid the 
mce of tin- slave while so confined. 

In 170s. Hendrieck Christian Zabriskie, of Bergen county, was 
awarded thirty pounds for his negro named Harry, lately executed for 
the murder of CI. The money was collected from the slave- 

owners of the county, upon the basis of an assessment of ten pence per 
head upon rill slaves in the county. 

In Hackensack, in 17(10. a slave pleading guilty to the charge of 
Stealing was whipped at the public whipping post and before the houses 
of two' prominent citizens, with thirty-nine lashes, on each of three days. 
taken from place to place tied to a cart's tail. 

*Mr. Hobart was a member of the Monmouth County Historical 
\- rom the time of its organization, in 1898, until his death, 

in iqoo. 

[t is related of a town constable, who had charge ot a public work- 
northern part of Xew Jersey, that he had a reputation for 
proficiency in administering the lash to those slaves whom he was called 
upon to whip. Caleb, a slave, had never been sent to the workhouse 
for a whipping, but he knew the reputation of the constable. During 



14 

In West Jersey, north of Burlington, and near the Hud- 
son, among the Dutch, slave owning was more prev- 
alent than in the Calvinistic towns of East Jersey. The 
Quakers, indeed, in spite of the teachings of Friend John 
Woolman, of Mount Holly, apostle of abolition, were slave 
owners during all of the colonial period of New Jersey.* 

About the year 1738 a book entitled "All Slave Keepers 
Apostates" was published in Philadelphia, and in the pre- 
face the author said : "These things following are so far 
from offending or grieving my very dear, true and tender 
friends called Quakers, who love the truth more than all, 
that it is by their request and desire that they are made 
publick." 

To this statement the "Friends called Quakers" took ex- 
ception, and they expressed their disapproval of the book 
by a minute adopted at the yearly meeting for New Jersey 



the Christmas season his master, who was indisposed, felt called upon 
to send Caleb to the workhouse for punishment, and he wrote a note 
to the constable about as follows : "Constable Brown — Please give the 
bearer thirty-nine lashes and charge to me. Thomas Jones." 

Calling up Caleb, Mr. Jones ordered him to take the note to Mr. 
Brown, who would give him a grubbing hoe. Caleb started toward Mr. 
Brown's home, adjoining the workhouse, but his suspicions were 
aroused. He could not understand what his master wanted with a 
grubbing hoe at Christmas time, and his conscience not being clear of 
guilt, he suspected that he was to be whipped. Meeting a boy, he took 
out the note and said: "Massa Bob, what is dis note? Got so many 
ub dem dis mornin', I got 'em mixed." The boy read the note aloud, 
and Caleb looked grieved and puzzled. The boy passed on and pres- 
ently Caleb's face brightened. Seeing a negro boy, he called to him 
and said: "Boy, does you want to make a shillin'?" "Yep," said the 
boy. "Well, take dis note to Massa Brown's, an' git a grubbin' hoe, an' 
I wait here till you comes back, an' den I gibs you a shillin'." The boy 
hurried off and delivered the note to the town 'constable, who took him 
into the yard, locked the gate, and proceeded, in spite of the boy's pro- 
tests, to give him the desired flogging, Caleb in the meantime hurrying 
off home. That evening his master asked: "Caleb, did you get that 
grubbing hoe ?" "No, massa ; I gib a boy a shillin' to fotch dat note to 
Massa Brown, and I spec he got dat hoe." 

*William Penn himself, whose light on slavery was not then awak- 
ened, says in a letter to his steward, James Harrison, at Pennsbury, Pa., 
dated 1685, referring to his indented white servants, who were changed 
too often: "It were better they were blacks, for then we might have 
them for life."— Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, Vol. 2, p. 262 



15 

and Pennsylvania, held at Burlington in 1738. The minute 
says : "It is not improbable that some readers may be per- 
suaded to believe the author is one of the people called 
Quakers, and that his book has been printed at their request, 
especially were they to be altogether silent on this occasion. 
Therefore, they have thought it fit, and hereby do give pub- 
lick notice that the book aforesaid contains gross abuses, not 
only against some of their members in particular, but against 
the whole society ; that the author is not of their religious 
community, and that they disapprove of his conduct, the 
composition and printing of his book, and therefore are not 
to be accountable for its contents." The book being a 
homily against slavery, it may be argued that this minute 
of the Yearly Meeting is equivalent to a declaration in favor 
of slavery, which is at variance with the position of the 
Quakers in after years on the slavery question. Members 
of this religions society originated and fostered the Under- 
ground Railway, an association having for its object the 
aiding of runaway slaves, and they gave every possible as- 
sistance to runaways from the South. The Quakers were 
also the strongest supporters of the Abolition party, which 
existed before the Civil War.* 

*In October, 1774, the colonists, when united to oppose British op- 
turned their thoughts to the unfortunate negro slaves and 
signed an agreement that they would "not purchase any slave imported 
the in 1 'lay of December next; after which time we will wholly 
discontinue tin- slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, 
nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures 
to those who arc concerned in it." The prohibition in slave importation 
was not legally imposed until the act of March, 1807, became operative. 
This law proving ineffectual on account of the ease and success of slave 
smuggling, an act was passed by Congress, in 1820, which imposed the 
death penalty upon all who were proved to be engaged in the slave trade. 
In 1842 the United States entered into a treaty with Great Britain to 
keep a sufficient naval force on the slave coast to effectually aid in the 
suppression of the slave trade. In order to escape detection, it was a 
common practice for the slaver to drown his black cargo when chased 
by the naval authorities. One case is recorded where 600 negroes were 
thus disposed of. 

The struggles in Congress over slavery began with the Missouri 
Compromise law, in 1820. The formation of anti-slavery societies and a 
general agitation in the North began in Jackson's administration, about 



i6 

A cautious disapproval of slavery by the Quakers of New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania is seen in the action of the Yearly 
Meeting in 1716. The minutes of that meeting say that 
out of consideration for those Friends whose consciences 
make them opposed to slavery "it is desired that Friends 
generally do as much as may be to avoid buying such negroes 
as shall be hereafter brought in, rather than offend any 
Friends who are against it; * * * * * yet this is 
only caution, not censure."* 

The extent of the African slave trade in New Jersey is 
unknown, but it is estimated that the number of blacks 
brought from Africa to all of the American colonies before 
the Revolution equalled nine millions, and one German his- 
torian (Hune) considers these figures too small. Mr. 
George Bancroft, American historian, on the other hand, 
says the number of importations was about three millions, 
to say nothing of the 250,000 thrown into the sea. He es- 
timates that the profits of the English merchants in this 
trade were not far from four hundred million dollars. Ban- 
croft draws a sad word-picture of the miseries endured by 
the negroes on the voyage from Africa. Often 500 were 
stored in vessels of not over 200 tons burden. They were 
generally chained in pairs by the ankle, and below decks, 
when sleeping, each was allowed a space of only six feet 
by sixteen inches. For exercise they were made to dance 
and caper on deck to the tune of the whip. The hardships 
of the voyage resulted in a death-rate never less than 12 
and often as high as 50 per cent, before reaching America. 
Sailing masters, we are told, on approaching a slaver at 
sea, made it a rule, when possible, to keep to the windward, 
to avoid the horrible odors that came from the open port 

1830; and the Kansas-Nebraska law of 1854 brought the anti-slavery 
feeling to a focus. The election of Lincoln, ii^ i860, led the South to 
declare for secession, and as a result of the war, President Lincoln is- 
sued his famous Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The 
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution in 1868 and 
1870 finally ended the slavery evil in America. 

* Woodbridge and Vicinity, p. 73, by J. W. Dally. 



i7 



holes and hatches of these ships, laden with human cargoes. 
The ingenuity of man, eager to torture his fellow beings, 
could not have planned a more complete hell on earth than 
a crowded slave ship on a protracted voyage.* 



*The sole survivor of the last vessel to bring a cargo of slaves to 
the United States was living in the pines, near Egg Harbor City, At- 
lantic county, in 1888. Nearly 70 years of age, with no idea of the moral 
questions involved in the trade, maintaining that "niggers" were as good 
a cargo to run as sugar or cotton, the old man told many stories of a 
life lived with the wildest and most adventurous class of the seafarers 
of fifty years ago. As a slaver, this old fellow would argue, he got his 
$30 a month; while on a "Quaker ship," where the captain read prayers 
on a Sunday, he- would get $14 and hard knocks. For his part he pre- 
ferred the risk of hanging and his $30. 

This is the -lory of old Obed Hicks, as taken down by the writer 
in [888: "In -May. 1858, 1 was in New York. I had come off a cruise 
and was paid off at Matanzas, so I had plenty of money, which, like 
most sailors, 1 fairly chucked through the hawse-hole and soon found 
myself hard up. One day 1 was going down Broadway and was hailed 
by an old captain of mine, named Corrie. I had made three voyages 
with him in a orig called the Dart, owned in Philadelphia by a firm that 
didn't see any harm in slaving. The captain asked me what I was do- 
ing and I said 'No good.' 'All right,' he answered, 'come with me and 
u a lift.' 

"So we went down to the Battery and took a boat there. The 
moment I saw the men in her I knew what was up. They were Span- 
iards and I knew one ><i them. We were pulled across the river to the 
Long Island shore. 

"We had six men in the crew, all Spaniards but one. In a few 
days we were hoarded by a lot of revenue men and the vessel was seiz- 

but it was -"on -et right, and by June 25 we lay off the Moro at 
II. \ana. and now work was rushed on the schooner. Her hold was 
cleaned out, everything was knocked away to make room, and when we 
let't C uba the decks were full, fore and at't. with water casks. A slaver 
ha- to carry as much water as a man-o'-war, for if it give- out the nig- 
heep; they can't go three days without it. The Wanderer 
was a goer and when we struck the Trades she just sailed herself, and 
we had nothing to do hut eat <\nd growl. We got into the Bight of 

n, I think. August 10, [858, and at once went up old Calabar River. 
A Portuguese named Fontana, who looked like a Madagascar monkey, 
had a barricoon there and he was to find us our cargo. 

"There was a Spanish vessel from Porto Rico, commanded by a big, 
double-jointed, man-eating Yankee, named Briggs, and he was to be 
despatched first. Slave- were scarce, and everything went slow, and 
then Briggs and the old Portuguese were always squabbling, but finally 
lie gol 420 niggers aboard, with gratings on hatches and everything 
-hip shape. Then the Yankee and Fontana had a final row, which end- 
ed in Briggs grabbing Fontana by the neck and fairly firing him over the 
spanker gaff into the river. In a minute the sharks had him, and that 
was tin- last of the Portuguese. Of course, there's no law on that coast, 



WHITE BONDAGE IN NEW JERSEY. 



The system of white bondage, known as redemptive servi- 
tude, existed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, and to some extent during the early part of the 
nineteenth century. The redemptioners were largely per- 



but the Yankee paid for it. Some of Fontana's friends gave informa- 
tion to an English corvette that lay outside, and when Bnggs sailed 
they signaled the man-o'-war from shore, and the Yankee and his vessel 
were taken. 

"The heat was awful, and the land breeze smelt like bilge water; 
anfl we lost two of our crew from fever. We had to stay there a month 
waiting for a caravan from the interior, but at last it came, and we 
took aboard 270 blackbirds, for whom we paid from thirty to fifty dol- 
lars apiece. They were all young and healthy, and it took some crowd- 
ing to get them aboard a 250-ton craft. We hurried to get away, and 
at night were safely out of the river and by daylight out of sight of 
land, and no cruisers to be seen. The Yankee frigate Cumberland was 
on the coast, but she could not catch a bumboat, such a tub as she was. 
"Now our work began. Captain Corrie had a plantation in Georgia 
with slaves of his own and knew how to handle his cargo. There were 
about sixty women and children and these were kept on deck all day 
and made to wash themselves. The men were taken out of hold four 
hours at a time, being divided into four gangs, so that only seventeen 
died on the voyage. Half of them committed suicide by doubling their 
tongues back into their throats. This was the smallest loss I ever saw 
in a slaver. I have seen twenty-eight thrown overboard in a day. We 
had fine weather and by November 9 were in sight of the Cuba moun- 
tains. We came off to Matanzas and signalled and three men came off 
to us. One was named Lamar and another Elliott. These were the 
owners. We lay here under the lee of an island four or five days and 
then made our course north. 

"It was intended to make a landing on the Florida coast, but there 
was a revenue vessel off there, so we made for the coast of Georgia. 
Here we dodged around until the 18th, and then ran into St. Andrew 
Sound and anchored about a hundred yards from land. It was just 
getting dark when three barges came alongside and inside of an hour 
we had a clean ship. Where the negroes went to, I don't know. 

"Next morning I and a man named Brown were paid off and the 
Spanish crew kept on the vessel. We got ashore, and after dodging 
around in the swamps, came to Savannah. I heard some talk of the 
Wanderer and got a passage North as soon as I could, but Brown and 
some of the Spaniards were taken and their ship was seized, but it 
didn't amount to anything." 

Those who were engaged in the enterprise lost heavily. Planters 
would not buy the negroes, as they could get no lawful title to them 
and they were eventually given to anyone who would keep them. The 
Wanderer was fitted up as a privateer by some of the Florida Confed- 
erates during the Civil war and sailed for Galveston, but ended her 
eventful career on one of the Florida reefs, being caught in a norther 
and driven ashore. 



i9 

sons, who, to reimburse the owners and masters of the ships 
for their passage and provender across the Atlantic, agreed 
that their services should be sold for a stipulated number of 
years. This form of bondage was usually voluntary and 
the time of servitude was fixed, seldom exceeding seven 
years, except in the case of very young persons. At the 
end of their terms these voluntary redemptioners were 
merged into the mass of white population, without any spe- 
cial taint of servitude. Harsh and disagreeable as it may 
seem in this age. the system gave to the colonists great num- 
ber-, of energetic and thrifty settlers, who, by reason of their 
poverty, otherwise never could have come to America. 

The English, rather than the Swedes or the Dutch, who 
preceded them, introduced the system of redemptive servi- 
tude in the colonies along the Delaware and Hudson. By 
a bloodless conquest in October, 1664, New Sweden (Penn- 
sylvania, West Jersey and Delaware) came under the rule 
of Great Britain, and in a few years the business of introduc- 
ing redemptioners began. 

True, a white slave, called "'Anthony." was brought to the 
Delaware shore from Sweden on the sloop Griffin in 1637, 
and remained in the colony as a bondsman. He served 
Governor Printz at his capacious mansion and spacious or- 
chards on Tinicum [sland, in 'the Delaware, making hay for 
the cattle and accompanying the Governor on his pleasure 
yacht. 

"Anthony" was living as late as March I, 1648. and prob- 
ably remained there until the fort and lands of the Swedes 
were surrendered to the Dutch, as we read, "for want of 
men and ammunition," in 1655. Tn this conflict between 
the Swedes and Dutch, ammunition was an entirely super- 
fluous article, the so called battle being decided in this wise: 
Taking it for granted that the most numerous party would 
conquer, if they fought, they also took the fighting for 
granted, and solved the problem of victory by an equation of 
noses. It was found that the Dutch noses largelv outnum- 
bered those of the Swedes, and accordingly the standard of 



20 

Holland waved in bloodless triumph over the ramparts of 
Tinicum. Nine years thereafter the flag of England super- 
seded that of Holland. 

Of the first white laborers or bond servants in New Jersey- 
there were three classes: i. Those who were brought here 
under indenture to serve a period of years, usually four to 
seven, to pay the cost of their passage. 2. Criminals, vaga- 
bonds and other obnoxious persons transported by order of 
the English courts, subsequent to 1 618. 3. Kidnapped per- 
sons, usually children, stolen in the streets of London and 
Liverpool and sold by the ship captains to such planters as 
would pay the cost of their passage. From these three 
sources many people came to New Jersey and the other 
colonies." 

The importation into the colonies of negro slaves, who 
were found to be cheaper than white servants, checked in 
a measure the trade in redemptioners. The rivalry was 
between the blacks and the whites, and the blacks won. In 
this there is an analogy to that process by which negro 
slavery supplanted Indian slavery in the West Indies. The 
abuses connected with Indian slavery in the West Indies 
touched the conscience of the people, and negroes, who could 
better stand slavery, were introduced. The abuses con- 
nected with white servitude in New Jersey and the other 
continental colonies finally touched the hearts of the British 
people, and again the negro was called on to bear the bur- 

*The demand for servants before the rise of slavery was always 
very great in the American colonies. It was the impossibility of supply- 
ing this by the regular means that furnished the justification professed 
in the English penal statutes and gave encouragement to the illicit prac- 
tice of "spiriting." In the early years, before these means were re- 
sorted to, dealing in servants had become a very profitable business. 
The London merchants were not slow to see the advantages of such 
a trade; a servant might be transported at a cost of from six pounds 
to eight pounds and sold for forty pounds or sixty pounds, and a sys- 
tematic speculation in servants was begun both in England and some 
of the colonies. Regular agencies were established, and servants might 
be had by anyone who wished to import them "at a day's warning." 
Others were consigned to merchants in the colonies or sent with shtp- 
loads of goods on a venture. 



21 



den of necessary labor. True, this was the case in greater 
degree in Virginia and other southern colonies, but here 
in New Jersey, as elsewhere, it was a case of the survival 
of the fittest, and eventually white servitude went down 
before the black man's superior endurance.* 

Truth compels us to say that England, during the re- 
demptive period, used America as a dumping ground for 
its human offal. In 1769, Dr. Samuel Johnson, speaking of 
Americans, said to a friend: "Sir, they are a race of con- 
victs and ought to be content with anything we may allow 
them, short of hanging."t 



*One hundred poor boys and girls, who were about to starve in the 
street > of London, were sent to Virginia in 1619, to be bound to the 
public land tenants for a term of years, at the end of which they were 
to become themselves tenants-at-halves, with an allowance of stock and 
corn i" begin with. Industrial apprenticeship was also authorized, the 
object being to encourage trade and to stop the excessive planting of 
lcco in the colony. The term was usually limited to seven years, or 
in the case of girls, upon marriage or becoming of age. 

It is a significant fact that the first negroes were brought to Vir- 
ginia in [619, the same year in which the principles of indented servi- 
tude were developed, and yet forty years later there were but 300 ne- 

- in that colony. From [664 to [671, several shiploads of negroes 
were brought in, and in the latter year there were 2,000 black slaves 
and 6,000 white servants in Virginia. By 1683 the number of servants 
was nearly [2,ooo, while the negroes numbered only 3.000. But from 
this time servitude gave way before slavery forced on the colonies by 
the Royal African Company, at the head of which was King Charles 
II and his brother James, the Duke of York, who sought to hasten the 
adoption of slavery by cutting off the supply of indented servants. — 
Servitude in the Colony of Va., p. 91. 

In the Pennsylvania Gazette of May 28, 1761, we find this advertise- 
ment: "Just imported from Barbados, in the ship William and Mary, 
George Nicholson, master, and now lodged at Daniel Cooper's ferry on 
Xew Jersey shore, a negro man and two negro boys, who are to be sold 
by Willing, Morris & Co. : the purchaser to pay the duty imposed by 
act of the Assembly, if brought into this Province." A few months later 
this firm advertised 170 negroes "fresh from the gold coast." The 
Willing here mentioned was Thomas Willing, Mayor of Philadelphia 
and first presidenl of the Bank of the United States. The Morris was 
none other than Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution. 

The Following advertisement appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal 

August 6, 1701 : "To be sold, on board the schooner Hannah, lying 
in the river Delaware, very near Daniel Cooper's ferry, West New Jer- 
sey, opposite Philadelphia, a cargo of likely negroes, just imported in 
said schooner from tin- coast of Guinea. For terms of sale, apply to 
Thomas Riche, David Franks or Daniel Rundle." 

fBoswell's Johnson, II, 312. 



22 

In the latest edition of Boswell, who chronicled this say- 
ing, it is explained by the following foot note: "Convicts 
were sent to nine of the American settlements. Accord- 
ing to one estimate, about 2,000 had been sent for many 
years annually. Dr. Lang, after comparing various esti- 
mates, concludes that the number sent might be about 50,000 
altogether." 

These English views of America, in the period of penal 
settlements, move indignation in the breast of an ardent 
American, for whom Massachusetts stands as a colony of 
conscience; New Jersey and Pennsylvania as an asylum for 
martyrs, and Virginia as the dominion of high-bred cavaliers. 
But a student who would nothing extenuate nor set down 
ausfht in malice is bound to ascertain how far the convict 
element really pervaded the nine plantations, Massachusetts 
on the North, New Jersey midway and Virginia on the 
South. In his search for information he will get little help 
from our standard histories. Bancroft, in 1887. said to 
James Davie Butler,* that in speaking of felons among the 
settlers, he had been very economical in dispensing the 
truths he had discovered. This historian, we feel- sure, 
wrote too early to expect that American eyes could bear the 
light of full disclosure. 

A large class, and probably a majority, of the convicts 
shipped to America during the colonial period were other 
than political offenders. In 1670, cattle killers and burners 
of corn-stacks became liable, either to death or transporta- 
tion to the plantations. The provincial authorities of Vir- 
ginia, the same year, passed the notable act prohibiting the 
importation of convicts; but this, like other acts of a similar 
aim in all the colonies, was overruled and nullified by orders 
from the king to his provincial officers. For other reasons 
also this prohibition did not prohibit. Planters needed 
laborers, and welcomed a supply from whatever quarter. 
Negroes were brought from Guinea, and kidnappped per- 



"American Historical Register, Vol. 2, p. 12. 



23 

sons from the British Islands: also those who had sold them- 
sel\ btain a passage to America, or convicts who had 

been sold by sheriffs to shipmasters.* 

The Gentlemen's Magazine of that period furnishes a 
particular record of criminals shipped to New Jersey or 
the other colonies. From this source we learn that William 
Dnell had been hung at Tyburn on November 24, 1739, but 
when laid out for dissection came to life. He was shipped 
to America on the following February 10th. 

On September [8, 1751, Philip Gibson, who had been 
condemned to death for a street robbery, would not accept 
the offer of fourteen years' transportation and insisted on 
his former sentence, which was that he should be hanged. 
After the Court had argued with him for some time, he was 
induced to consider the commutation till the next sessions, 
and on ( >ctober 21 he accepted the lighter sentence and was 
shipped to the colonies. On September 19. 1750, one Es- 
cote. a tobacconist, for buying 40,000 pounds of tobacco at 
sixpence a pound, was sentenced to fourteen years' trans- 
lation — a rather severe punishment for receiving stolen 
Is. No "Jersey Justice" ever equalled that. 

When Cromwell had conquered Ireland, says Walpole in his "King- 
dom of Ireland," the Irish officers sought safety on the continent, while 

rank and file were pressed to enlist in foreign service. "As many 
as 34.000 men were thus hurried into exile. Widows and orphans the 
enl shipped wholesale to the West Indies — the boys for slaves, 
the women and girls for mistresses to the English sugar-planters. The 
lave dealers as far hack as the days of Richard 
Strongbow, in the twelfth century— sent their agents over to Ireland to 
hunt down and ensnare the wretched people. Orders were given on 
the governors of jails and work-houses for boys who were of an age 
to labor and women who were marriageable." 

The words "West Indies" in the foregoing excerpt probably mean 
the best American market, no matter where. "A curious chapter might 
be written on the word 'Indies' and the historic mistakes which have 
ilted from misapprehensions of the geographical term," says the 
Ami torical Register. In [652, Peter Heylyn, a standard Eng- 

lish cosmographer, printed in his folio concerning the Western Hemi- 

re these word-: "It is sometimes called the New World. Its most 
usual, yet somewhat improper name, is America. The most improper 
name of all. and vet not much less used than that of America, is the 

, Indies." The English Historical Register for 1715, and long 
afterward, in it- record of current events, constantly sets down, under 
the heading "West Indies," news from Virginia, and even New York 
and Boston. 



24 

Under the date of May 31, 1747. we read that 430 rebel 
prisoners from the jails of Lancaster, Carlisle, Chester, 
York and Lincoln, were transported in one month from 
Liverpool to the plantations. Eight of these were drown- 
ed by a boat upsetting, the men being handcuffed and there- 
fore unable to swim. "This number, with the rest," says 
the record, "makes above a thousand rebels transported this 
year." 

Again, under date of February 10, 1767, we read that 
"Fourteen transports from Durham, Newcastle and Mor- 
peth were put on board the 'J ennv / Captain Blagdon, at 
which time ten young artificers also shipped themselves for 
America, paying for passage by selling themselves into 
bondage." The same publication adds : "One of these in- 
dented servants has enlisted into 46 regiments, been whipped 
out of 19, sentenced to be shot 6 times, been confined in 73 
jails, appeared under the character of a quack doctor in 7 
kingdoms, and now is only in the 32d year of his age." 

The statute of 1718 — to which I shall presently refer — 
thanks to which so many Englishmen left their country for 
their country's good, was not extended to Scotland until 
half a century afterward, or in 1768. Dr. Franklin de- 
scribes himself as protesting to the British Parliament 
against this extension. The old law, Franklin* said, had 
been a great grievance, but if English felons were to be re- 
inforced bv Scotch, the burden would become intolerable. 
At all events, he claimed reciprocity. If Scotland must send 
her felons to the plantations, let the plantations send their 
felons to Scotland. This statesman and philosopher consid- 
ered the emptying of English jails upon the colonies the 
most cruel insult ever offered bv one nation to another.* 



* Benjamin Franklin had many ways of "turning a penny," and one 
of these was the traffic in slaves and redemptioners, as the columns of 
his newspaper, the "Pennsylvania Gazette," bear witness. He would 
occasionally purchase the time of redemptioners and then advertise (he 
same for sale in his paper. Some of his advertisements are as follows : 

"A likely servant lad's time to be disposed of. He is fit for coun- 
try or town business ; has four years to serve, and has been in the coun- 
try a year and a half. Enquire of the printer." 



25 



The names of felons transported are seldom mentioned 
in the Gentlemen's Magazine, excepting when they returned 
and were sentenced to be hanged. In such cases the names 



"To be sold— a likely servant woman, having three years and a 
half to serve. She is a good spinner." . 

"A likely young woman's time to be disposed of; about eighteen 
years of age, fit for town or country business, and can handle a needle 

well " r 

"To be sold— a likely Dutch servant girl, about thirteen years ot 

age, and has five years to serve." _ _ _ . 

Though there was at that time a positive sentiment in Philadelphia 
against the buying and selling of human beings, Franklin was not 
aV er . Siting by that sort of traffic, and he made many a venture 

in the purchase and sale of negroes, hi- newspaper informing the public 

"A likely young negro wench, who is a good^cook, and can wash 
well, is to be disposed of. Enquire of the printer." 

"To be sold— a likely mulatto girl, aged about 16 years; has had 
the smallpox; is fit for either town or country; to be disposed of very 
Enquire <>\ the printer hereof." 

"To he sold— a likely negro woman, with a man-child, fit for town 
or country business." . 

■■'I',, I,,, -old— a lusty young negro woman, fit for country business. 
She 1 mallpox and meazles. Enquire of the printer hereof.' 

"To be sold— a prime able young negro man, fit for laborious work 
in town or country, that has had the smallpox. Also a middle aged 

man, that has likewise had the smallpox. Enquire of the printer 

or otherwise, they will b I to sale by public vendue on 

irday, the nth of April next, at 12 o'clock, at the Indian King, in 

Market _» 

Some of these slaves Franklin procured from New England, where 
then ■■ diminishing demand for them. Not all of his ven- 

ture were profitable, since of one purchase of husband and 

wife Franklin wrote to his mother: "We conclude to sell them both 
the firs) good opportunity, for we do not like negro servants," with a 
lit that "w tin aboul half what we lost." In spite of this 

udice against nej Franklin took with him two negro servants 

to England on hi- second visit, with slight benefit, for one who "was 
of little use, and often in mischief." ran off within a year, and the other 
inly "as well as I could expect in a country where there are 
man] ns of spoiling servants, if they are ever so good." "He has 

as few faults as most of them." the philosopher adds, "and I see with 
only -He eye and hear only with one ear; so we run on pretty com- 
fortably." 

1 ■ inklin, as he grew older, changed his views on slavery, ami finally 
became strong 1 to the whole system. When the initial aboli- 
tion society in America was formed he became its president, and his 

ne was signed to the firsl petition to Congress for the abolition of 
the slave trade .mi act which resulted in his bein^ personally vituperated 
on the floor of that body less than a month before his death. The de- 
bate on tin- petition drew from him the last public paper he ever pen- 
ned, in which he very cleverly used all the arguments of his opponents, 
who upheld slavery, a- reasons for the suppression of the system. 



26 

are preserved and are accessible by American genealogists 
who go abroad to trace their ancestry. Daniel Webster, it 
was, who said before a New England society in 1845, "Men 
who are regardless of their ancestors are apt to be regard- 
less of themselves." But who of us will impute a lack of 
pride in ancestry to him who follows his string back to the 
time we are now considering, only to find that string waxed 
and looped at the end ? 

Orders from the Privy Council or from judges, and even 
inferior magistrates, sent felons into the American colonies 
as early as 1618; but nothing tended so powerfully to bring 
about such deportations as a statute of 1718 — one hundred 
years after the first recorded case. This act provided that 
persons convicted of clergyable offences, such as burglary, 
robbery, perjury, forgery and theft, after being sentenced 
to death, might, if their crimes did not seem too heinous, 
"at the discretion of the Court, be transported to America 
for at least seven years," remaining punishable with death 
without further trial if they should return before the expira- 
tion of their sentence. A reason assigned for this enact- 
ment was the great want of servants who might be the 
means of improving the colonial plantations and making 
them more useful to his Majesty, King George I. 

Not all of the redemptioners, however, were deported 
criminals and soldiers, kidnapped or "spirited" women and 
children, artizans and farmers, or people of lowly birth. 
Some belonged to an entirely different class of people.* 

*The practice of "spiriting" grew up in the reign of Charles I. and 
continued throughout the Commonwealth period and the reign of 
Charles II. It was an organized system of kidnapping persons, young 
and old, usually of the laboring classes, and transporting them to the 
plantations to be sold for the benefit of the kidnapper or shipmaster 
to whom they were assigned. It became widely extended in England, 
but Bristol and London were the centers of the traffic. Throughout 
London and the parishes of Middlesex county, we are told, its agents, 
called "spirits," were distributed — men and women, yeomen, tradesmen, 
doctors and a class of rogues and idlers who earned a livelihood by this 
means. The ladies of the court, and even the Mayor of Bristol, were 
not above the suspicion of profiting by this lucrative business. All 
manner of pretenses were used to decoy the victims aboard ships lying 
in the Thames or to places where they could be assaulted and forcibly 
conveyed on board, to be disposed of to the ship's company or to mer- 
chants. The story of "Jack Ballister's Fortunes," by Howard Pyle, pub- 



27 

In the burial ground of the old brick meeting house at 
Calvert, Chester county, Pa., is the grave of a woman of 
gentle birth, who voluntarily became a redemptioner, and 
whose career offers a theme for the novelist quite as tempt- 
ing as that with which Paul Leicester Ford has invested 
the redemptioner, John Brereton, soldier-lover of Janice 
Meredith. Elizabeth Maxwell was an English maiden, 
born in the opening year of the eighteenth century. Her 
mother and uncle, the latter being none other than Daniel 
Defoe, the great author, frowned upon the attentions of a 
young man in London; and angered by their treatment, she 
left her home secretly and took passage for America. Hav- 
ing no money with which to pay her passage, she agreed 
with the captain of the ship to be sold as a redemptioner 
on reaching America. Accordingly, in the fall of 1718, she, 
being then eighteen years old, was sold at Philadelphia to 
Andrew Job. of Calvert, Pa. While living at the home of 
her owner, she was wooed and won by Thomas Job. a re- 
lative of Andrew. After their marriage, she wrote to her 
relatives in London, telling them of her circumstances and 
surroundings. Her uncle, Daniel Defoe, replied that her 
mother had died and left property to her by will. A list of 
the articles came with the letter, and Defoe was desirous 
that she should take special care of those articles which he 
had used in his library, as they had descended to the family 
from their Flemish ancestors, who sought refuge under the 
banner of Queen Elizabeth from the tyranny of Philip of 
Spain, about 1560. Among the goods were two chairs, 
which are still in the keeping of Elizabeth Maxwell Job's 
descendants, in Pennsylvania. This niece of the great De- 
foe, this redemptioner of gentle birth, lived happily at Cal- 
vert until her death in [782.* 

lished in tin- St. Nicholas Magazine in 1804-5. describes the kidnapping 
of two fictitious persons. Jack Ballister and Lawyer Burton. They were 
assaulted and shipped from Southampton about 1718. In 1664 the abuse 
had grown so bad that tumults were frequently raised in the streets of 
London. It was only necessary to point t lie finger at a woman, and 
call her a "common spirit," to raise a "ryot" against her. 

""Rambles in Colonial By-Ways," by Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Vol. 
11. pp. 101-2. 



28 

Many servants were of better origin and education than 
the generality of freemen, and were frequently employed 
in such responsible positions as teachers. Many ministers 
were imported on conditions almost parallel with those of 
indented servants. Col. William Preston, of Smithville, 
Va., bought at Williamsburg, about 1776, a gentleman 
named Palfrenan as a teacher for his family. He was a 
poet and scholar, a correspondent and a friend of the cele- 
brated authoress, Elizabeth Carter, and also of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson. This man educated many of the Prestons and 
Breckenridges in Virginia. The distinguished William C. 
Preston, of South Carolina, was one of his pupils.* 

Another redemptioner of high degree was a lawyer and 
political offender named Henry Justice, who was deported 
to Virginia in 1736 for stealing out of the library of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, a bible and prayer book, valued at 
25 pounds; a book on horsemanship, valued at 10 pounds, 
besides several other books and tracts. The transatlantic 
career of this purlioner of bibles and prayer books has not 
yet been ascertained, but there is a possibility that he be- 
came the instructor of Washington in his boyhood. Jonathan 
Boucher, rector at Annapolis for many years before the 
Revolution, and tutor to Washington's step-son, Parke Cus- 
tis, and who, in 1773, lamented that two-thirds of the Mary- 
land schoolmasters were convicts, relates that George Wash- 
ington, with whom he claimed very particular intimacy and 
friendship, "had no other education than reading, writing 

*Intermarriage of free persons and servants was very common. 
Masters sometimes bought female servants for their wives, and it was 
not uncommon for men servants to marry into their master's families 
when they gained their freedom. One writer in Virginia — Bullock, in 
1649 — advises English fathers to send their daughters to Virginia rather 
than their sons, and promises that they "will receive instead of give por- 
tions for them." "Maid servants," he says, "of good, honest stock, may 
choose their husbands out of the better sort of people. Have sent over 
many, but never could keep one at my plantation three months, except 
a poor filly wench made fit to foille to set of beauty, and yet a poor 
young fellow served twelve months for her." He tells men servants 
how they may prosper by their service and lay up a competence "and 
then if he looks to God. he may see himself fit to wed a good man's 
daughter." — White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia. 



29 

and accounts, which he was taught by a convict servant 
whom his father had bought for a school-master." "Not 
a ship arrives." adds Boucher, "with either redemptioners. 
or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly ad- 
vertised for sale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade; 
with little other difference that I can hear of, except per- 
haps that the schoolmasters do not usually fetch so good 
a price as the weavers and tail" >rs." ::: 



*The London Magazine furnishes the following account— much 
a bridj ' Henry Justice, lawyer and possible tutor of 

Washington, in his boyhood: 

■ . May 3, 1736, came on * * * * the trial of Henry Jus- 

of tlie Middle Temple, for stealing out of the library of Trinity- 
College, Cambridge, a Field's Bible with cuts and common prayer, value 
£25; Newcastle's Horsemanship, value £10. several other books of great 
va l U( - em out of books, etc. * * * * The coun- 

sel of Mr. Justice were Mr. Winne, Mr. Agar and Mr. Robinson. 
(After many objections, pleading not guilty, he was proved so by wit- 
nesses; he then claimed to he a member of the Trinity corporation, etc., 
Inn the jury found him guilty of felony within benefit of clergy. He 
was then charged with stealing either books, and after six hours pleaded 
guilty.) Mond. 10. Mr. Justice, being brought to the Old Bailey to 
ntence, d irt — Lord Hardwick, Mr. Justice Den- 

ton, etc. — that as they had a discretionary power either to transport or to 
burn in the hand, etc., he might not he sent abroad, which would, first, 
be a great injury to his children, and to his client-, with several of 
whom lie had great concerns. Secondly, for the sake of the University. 

II,- had numbers of 1 ks belonging to them, some sent to Holland, 

and it he were transported he could not make restitution. As for him- 
self, he would rather go abroad, having lived in credit before this un- 
happy mistake, a- he called it. lie hoped the gentlemen of the Lniver- 

several of whom hi Dresent, would intercede for him. 

mty Recorder, in a very handsome speech, commiserated 

his case, telling" him that his education, profession, etc., greatly aggra- 

1 hi- crime. After which he pronounced sentence, that he must be 
transported to some one of his Majesty's plantations in America— there 
to remain -even years — and be put to death if he returned," etc. 

It will he observed that the particular colony to which this legal 
luminary wa- doomed is not mentioned. Possibly, however, it is not 

md discovery. Seven days afterwards, May 17, the Gentleman's 
Magazine chronicle is: "A hundred felons-convict walked from New- 

to Blackfryars, and thence went in a close lighter on board a -hip 
M Blackwall. But Weathercock, the attorney; Messrs. Riffhead, Vaughn 
and Bird went to Blackwall in two hackney coaches, and Henry Justice, 
er-at-law, in another, two hours after the walking felon., 
tided by Jonathan Forward, Esq. These five gentlemen of distinc- 
tion were accommodated with the captain's cabin, which _ they stored 
with provisions, etc., for their voyage and travels." — American Histori- 
cal Register. 



3° 

The early records contain many references to these servi- 
tors or redemptioners fleeing from their masters, who were 
thereupon required to advertise them or be liable for their 
maintenance wherever captured. Some of these advertise- 
ments, as we find them in the files of the old newspapers of 
that day, are interesting reading. The curious garb worn 
by the runaways — relics of finery, sometimes indicating 
their gentle birth ; the references to branding, showing the 
prevalence of that barbarous custom as a punishment for 
crime ; the peculiar descriptions of some of the servants ; 
the "leering down look." "the proud, hambling gait," "he 
walks crimplm," "he's so prodigious a liar that if observed 
he may be easily discovered by it." "he has a long nose and 
a wild look," "he goes crooked and groans very much in his 
sleep," "he speaks by clusters," "he talks West Country," 
etc. — these throw a flood of light on the condition of the 
toiling masses in those days. 

Sometimes a man would come into this country free and 
become a servitor through misfortune. Thus we find 
Francis Smith, of Burlington, advertising in the Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette, in 1739, for the recovery of a runaway "West 
Country servant man, named John Wood, aged 40 vears. 
He has worked in and about London, has been in this coun- 
try about ten or eleven years, has worked in Chester and 
Philadelphia counties and in New Jersey. Pie says he came 
in free, but falling into bad company was brought into 
trouble and so became a servant."* 



*A few advertisements, copied from the newspapers of that day, 
will illustrate the manner of advertising these runaway servants, and 
will give us an insight into a custom which was maintained in New 
Jersey for so many years : 

From the American Weekly Mercury, July 11-18, 1728. 

Run away the 8th of July, from William Reed, of Great Egg Har- 
bour, a servant man named Lawrence Conor, an Irish Man of a short 
Stature, aged about 26 Years of a homely complection and down Look, 
his Hair Cut off, a black Beaver Hat, a Brown Duroy Coat Jacket and 
Breeches of Duroy trimed with Black, with Silk Puffs to the Breeches, 
one of the Puffs being out, moss coloured yarn Stockings, a Pair of 
Wooden heel'd Shoes, a pair of double barr'd Silver Shoe Buckles, a 



3i 

pair of Women's Silver Buckles, took away with him a large Dark 
Brown Mare, with a Star in her Forehead Branded on the Buttock with 
O. B., the Men's Buckles mark't with A. R., the Woman's Buckles 
mark't with A. A. Whosoever takes up and secures the said Servant 
so as his -aid Master may have him again, shall have Three Pounds 
Reward and reasonable Charges paid by William Reed. 

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 19-26, 1735. 

Run away the 18th instant, from Thomas Ustick, of Second River 
in Newark. East Jersey, an Irish Servant Man named Owen Ward, 
about 23 Years of Age, a slender grown Man, with a large Scar on the 

side of his Face under his Eye, and the forefinger of one of his 
Hand- ha- lost the first Joint; professes to lie Husbandman and Miner. 
Had on a Hat scallop'd round the Brim, a white Wig, and a blue check- 
ed cotton Shirt. He was taken tip and imprison'd at Burlington, and 

;■ taken from thence he made his Escape. Whoever takes up and 
brings him to Thomas Dunning at the George Inn in Philadelphia or to 
his said Master, shall have Forty Shillings Reward and Reasonable 
Charges paid by Tin una- Ustick or Tin una- Dunning. 

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 7-14, 1739. 

Run away on the oth In-t.. from Abraham Bryan, of Burlington 
County, in West New Jersey, an Irish Servant Man, belonging to John 
Macontish, named Edward Curry, aged about 26 Near-, -hort and well 
j'd. brown complexion'd, and has the Brogue of his Ton- 
Mad 1.11 when he went away, a pretty good Kersey Coat with Brass 
Button-, a white flannel jacket lae'd down before, without Sleeves, old 

ther Breeches, old yarn Stockings, old peeked toe'd Shoes, and a 
pretty good Fell Hat. Ik- served a time in Chester County, and was 
some time in Chester Can]. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and 
secures him either in Chester Gaol in Pennsylvania, or the Work-House 
in Philadelphia shall have Twenty Shilling- Reward and reasonable 
Charges paid by Abraham Bryan. 

'From the Pennsylvania Gazette of the same date. 

Run away Yesterday Morning, from William Tateham, of Glo 
ter County, in Wesl New Jersey, an Irish Servant Lad. named John 

:i. aged about 1S Years, shorl and well-set, round fae'd, freash col- 
oured, black curl'd Hair, ha- the Brogue on hi- Tongue; Had on a 
brown homespun Coat, two Ozenbrigs Shirts and a tine one. two pair 
of ozenbrigs Trowsers, blue worsted Stockings, peeked toe'd Calf-skin 
Shoes, and a half-worn Fell Hat. He went in company with one Den- 
nis M'glaugh (who is advertised and Forty Shillings Reward offer'd for 
taking him) in a small new light Wherry painted red. belonging to 
John Ladd, inn. Whoever take- up and secures the -aid Servant and 
Wherry, so that they may he had again, shall have Forty Shillings Re- 
ward for the Servant and Ten Shillings for the Wherry, and the reason- 
able Charges paid by William Tateham and John Ladd, jun. 

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, March i-S, 1739. 

Bun away on the 2d Inst, from John Burr, of Burlington County, 
an English Servant Man. named I-aac Tailor, (but will change his 
name) a lusty young red-fae'd, red-headed Fellow, with a crooked Fin- 



32 

These advertisements are found only in Boston, New 
York and Philadelphia newspapers, for the reason that up to 
about 1750 the only periodicals in the country were pub- 
lished in those three cities. Nor was their publication as 
regular as we would expect in these days. The printer's 
welfare was considered, rather than the public convenience. 
In the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 22 to August 22, 1736, 
we find this apology by Benjamin Franklin, then a young 
man who had established the Gazette in 1729 : "The printer 
hopes the irregular publication of this paper will be excused 
a few times by his Town Readers, on consideration of his 
being at Burlington with the Press, laboring for the pub- 
lick good, to make money more plentiful." This manner 
of "making money more plentiful," was by the issuing of 
forty thousand pounds of paper bills of credit by the Pro- 
vince of New Jersey, for the printing of which Franklin 
had received the contract at 160 pounds, although William 
Bradford, of the New York Gazette, had offered to do the 
work for 100 pounds. "Such," said the indignant Brad- 
ford in his paper, "is the effect of Party Faction and prej- 
udice. But it's no matter; it's the country's money, and 
if the publick cannot afford to pay well, who can? It's 
proper to serve a Friend when there's an opportunity." 



ger on his left Hand, small white Specks on his upper Fore Teeth, his 
right Shin very sore, speaks West Country. Had on when he went away 
a dirty Leather Jacket, no Hat, an ozenbrigs Shirt, old dirty Leather 
Breeches, black and white yarn Stockings, very large strong Shoes ; he 
stole two very lightish colour'd kersey Coats with large Brass Buttons, 
without Lining; He was imported about two Years since into Virginia, 
afterwards put into Dover Gaol, and sold to one Richard Manwarring, 
from whom he run away and chang'd his Name, was put into Philadel- 
phia Gaol, and sold to said John Burr; from whom he run away on 
Sunday Night the 25th of February past, chang'd his Name, was ad- 
vertis'd and taken. He was taken up last Night, by two young Men, who 
attempting to bring him to his said Master, he stabb'd them both, which 
'tis thought to one of them will be mortal. Whoever takes up and se- 
cures the said Servant in Irons, in any Gaol, so that he may be brought 
to Justice, shall have six Pounds Reward, and reasonable Charges paid 
by John Burr. 



33 

As the wealth and population of the colonies increased, 
the importation of redemptioners became a matter of busi- 
ness. A class of men speculated in these emigrants much 
the same as they would in cattle. They purchased them 
from the master of the vessel or from the merchants to whom 
they were consigned, and then drove them through the 
country, to be sold to willing" purchasers at a considerable 
advance in price. 

Those engaged in the business were stigmatized as soul- 
drivers by some people, and. forsooth, they were generally 
men without much soul or conscience. Nor were the mas- 
ters of the vessels at all particular as to the character of 
those whom they imported for these soul-drivers. As has 
been shown, they brought into the colonies, in the character 
of redemptive servants, criminals purchased from the jails, 
and dissolute women from London and other large cities. 
In New Jersey there were, besides the criminals, represen- 
tatives of the various strata of society — sons of gin id fami- 
lies, street waifs, soldiers of fortune, young girls fresh from 
farms, some in search of better homes and some seeking ad- 
venture or desiring to reform wayward lives. 

The business as a whole became such an evil that statutes 
were passed, forbidding masters of vessels from landing 
convicts in the provinces. A violation of this law was pun- 
ishable by line and the penalty was extended to merchants 
who imported, sold or disposed of such convicts. 

Finally, the business of importing and selling redemp- 
tioners, good, bad and indifferent, became somewhat pre- 
carious, many of the servants escaping from their owners 
while travelling through the country to find a market. 
About the year [795 the trade was almost abandoned. It 
is related of a soul driver named McCullough, who became 
noted in the trade, that he made several trips to Europe 
and gathered droves of redemptioners for the American 
market. On one occasion McCullough was outwitted by 
a man called "Terry." who was one of his herd of human 
chattels, and who contrived to be the last of the lot offered 
3 



34 

for sale. "Terry" was Irish and McCullough was Irish, 
too. One night "Terry" and his master lodged at a tavern, 
the landlord of which was ignorant of the fact that one 
of the strangers was a redemptioner. In the morning the 
young Irishman arose early and contrived to sell his mas- 
ter to the landlord. Pocketing the money he casually in- 
formed the landlord that his new servant, still asleep in an 
upper room, although tolerably clever in other respects, was 
rather saucy and a little given to lying. In fact, he had 
presumption enough at times to endeavor to pass himself 
off as a freeman, and that possibly he might represent him- 
self as such to his new owner ! By the time the soul- 
driver was up and doing and the landlord undeceived, 
the son of Erin had gained such a start that pursuit was im- 
possible. 

About 1785, there was an improvement in the condition 
of the redemptioner. and in the terms of the contract. In 
the latter it was stipulated that the bond-servant should have 
sufficient meat, drink, lodging and apparel, and two freedom 
suits when the term of service expired. One of these free- 
dom suits must be new or ten pounds currency might be 
o-iven in its stead.* 

In New Jersey, according to "Learning and Spicer," no 
white servant, if sold or bound after seventeen years of age, 
could serve above four years. If under seventeen, he was 
free after reaching his majority. At the expiration of ser- 
vice, the master was obliged to supply the servant with two 
good suits of clothing, one good falling axe, one good hoe 
and seven bushels of Indian corn. If so abused by a master 
or mistress as to lose an eve or a tooth, the servant was to be 
immediately freed. Aiding or abetting in the escape of 

*The first record of the transfer of a redemptioner, previous to the 
grant to Penn. was at a cor.rt held at Upland, now Chester. Pa., Tunc 
1.3, 1677, and this transfer is set forth in the quaint phraseology of the 
day : 

"Mr. John Test brought in Court a certaine man servant named 
William Still, being a taylor by traede. whome hee the sd Test did ac- 
knowledge to have sold unto Cap'n Edmund Cantwell for the space and 
tearme of foure yeares. beginning from the first of April Last past : The 
sd William Still declared in Court to bee willing to serve the said Cap'n 
Cantwell the aboved tearmes of foure yeares." 



35 

a redemptioner from his master was a statutory offense, 
punishable with a fine and damages for loss of services.* 

Twenty pounds or more was the price at this time 
for which a redemptioner usually sold,, whether man or 
woman, and whether the time of service was long or short. 
Children brought eight to ten pounds. In Pennsylvania, 
should the man-servant serve faithfully and well for fourt 



*In but few cases did the court permit servants' offenses to be 
punished by fine; the usual penalty was whipping or additional servi- 
tude to the master or to the colony. In Virginia, in 1640. a number of 
servants, fur conspiracy "to run out of the colony and enticing divers 
others to lie actors in the same conspiracy," were sentenced to be se- 
verely whipped and to serve the colony for a period of seven years in 
iron-". Samuel Powell, for purloining a pair of breeches and other 
thing- from the houseof Captain John Howe, deceased. was_ sentenced 
to "pay ffower dayes work to Elias Taylor with all charges of the court 
and the .sheriff'- (Tees, and to sit in the stockes on the next Sabbath day, 
witli a ribell in his halt, from the beginning of morninge prayer until 
the end of the sermon, with a pair of breeches about his neck." 

A case which musl Ik- regarded as very exceptional occurred in 
Virginia in 1655. An apprentice complained that his master made him 
work on Sunday, and further misused him "by fastening a lock with a 
chain to it and tying ami fettering him to the shoppe. and that said 
master, hi- wife and mother did most cruelly and inhumanly beat his 
said apprentice and also whipped him til he was very bloody and his 
flesh raw ■ over a greal part of hi- body, and then salted him and held 
him naked to the fire, being SO salted to add to his pain." 

"More than anything else." says James Curtis Ballagh. in his mono- 
graph on white servitude in Virginia, "the habit on the part of servants 
themselves of absconding from their master's service, stealing their 
master's good- and enticing other- in go with them, worked to the detri- 
ment of the masters. The courts attempted by the most severe punish- 
ments I" put a stop in the practice. Whipping, additions of time, brand- 
ing, and even servitude in iron-, proved ineffectual. The possibility of 
entire escape from servitude or of service on better terms proved too 
great a temptation, and with an unruly class of servants such attempts 
became habitual. Statute after statute was passed by the colonies, regu- 
lating the punishment and providing for the pursuit and recapture of 
runaways: but although laws gradually became severer and finally made 
no distinction in treatment between runaway servants and slaves in 
-nine nf the colonics, it wa- impossible to entirely put a stop to the habit 
so long as the system itself lasted." 

fSeveral acts were passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature regulat- 
ing the trade in redemptioners. By the act of 1700 the servant, at the 
expiration of the term of servitude, was to have two "complete suits of 
apparel, whereof one -hall be new, and shall also be furnished with one 
new axe, one new grubbing hoe and one weeding hoe. at the charge of 
the master or mistress." Tin- continued to be the law of Pennsylvania 
until the an of March o. 1771. repealed so much of the law of 1700 as 
related to the furnishing of a new axe, a grubbing and a weeding hoe. 



3^ 

years, he was to have, besides two suits of clothes, a grub- 
bing hoe, a weeding hoe and a new axe. For each day 
he absented himself from labor without his master's leave, 
five days were added to his service time, and if he married 
without permission, he was required to serve an additional 
year.* 

Save so far as the laws hindered, ship-captains were free 
to do with their bondsmen as they pleased. They parted 
husband and wife and separated children from parents; 
nay, when the yellow fever was devastating Philadelphia, 
in 1793, one brutal captain shocked the people of Chester 
by sailing up the Delaware with a cargo of redemptioners, 
and seeking to sell them as nurses for the smallpox patients 
in Philadelphia. t 

From more than one of this cargo of lowly redemptioners 
there has descended several generations of brave and hon- 
est people — stalwart sons of sturdy sires. \\ nat matters 
it if some of the sires were not so sturdy ? " Honor and 
shame," says Pope, "from no condition rise; act well your 
part, there all the honor lies.'' It is no stain upon the gal- 
lant Custer, slaughtered with his band of 200 by the horde 



^Registry of the Redemptioners, 1785-1817, in Pennsylvania His- 
torical Society. 

fThe last sale of a redemptioner in the vicinity of Philadelphia was 
in 181 1. Abraham Peters, of Lancaster county, was hauling grain to the 
mills on the Brandywine, near Wilmington, and was requested by his 
sifter to buy a small German girl. The vessels then stopped at Chester. 
and after disposing of his grain Peters drove to Chester and purchased 
for $25 an orphan eirl named "Katy." The mother had died at sea, 
leaving Katy and her sister to be disposed of as redemptioners. The 
master of the vessel wished to sell the two sisters to one person for 
$40, but Mr. Peters declined to take more than one. He promised, how- 
ever, to secure, if possible, a purchaser for the other girl at $15. On his 
return home he met a Quaker gentleman and his wife, who wished to 
buy Katy. Peters would not sell, but told them of her sister, who could 
be bought for $15, and accordingly the old Quaker and his wife went to 
Chester and purchased Katy's sister. Mr. Peters and the Quaker had 
previously exchanged adclres-es and promised to keep the two sisters in 
correspondence with each other. Both girls found good homes and 
frequently wrote to each other. They grew to womanhood, and Katy 
married a worthy German baker named Lutz in Philadelphia. She es- 
teemed it a privilege to visit her former mistress, to whom she was ever 
thankful for the religious training received at her Lancaster county 
home. 



37 

of Sioux on the Big Horn in 1876, that his grandfather 

was a Hessian named Kuster, captured by Gates in 1777. 
Nor does it matter that the brave captain. James Lawrence, 
whose dying words, ."Don't give up the Ship," became the 
watchword of the American Navy, and that other distin- 
guished naval commander. William Bainbridge, both native- 
born Jersevmen — the one born at Burlington, the other at 
Princeton — nor does it matter. I say. that these two patriots 
were the sons of ////patriotic sires — men who made them- 
selves obnoxious during the Revolution by their strong 
Tory proclivities. The hero of the •'Chesapeake" was re- 
lated to that branch of the Lawrence family of Monmouth 
county, who were ardent tories — two of them jailed for 
disloyalty, and a third, the last royal high sheriff of Mon- 
mouth county and colonel of the loyal "Volunteers," cap- 
tured on Staten Island by Colonel Mathias Ogden in 1777. 

Once in the hands of a new master, says the historian 
of Xew Jersey. Francis B. Lee.- '"the life of the redemp- 
tioner was more distasteful than that of the slave. Some 
owners recognized that their tenure over the life and liberty 
of the redemptioner was brief and uncertain, and moved by 
selfish considerations, they cruelly overworked their bond- 
men. As a result, there was a time when the redemptioner 
often performed more degrading labor than the slave. 

At the conclusion of their terms of service, the redemp- 
tioners, as has been stated, were mostly merged into the 
mass of white population without any special taint of servi- 
tude. A manuscripl letter of Jonathan Dickinson, of Penn- 
svlvania, dated 1722, says: "Many who have come over 
under covenants for four years are now masters of great 
estates." Watson, in his "Annals of Philadelphia," writ- 
ing in 1842, savs. "1 have knowledge of two or three among 
us. even within my memory, who rose to riches and credit 
here and have left line families. ( hie great man, before 
my time, had been sold in Maryland as an offender from 

*"New Jersey as a Colony and Stair," Vol. I, p. 201. 



3S 

Ireland. While serving his master as a common servant, 
he showed much ability in managing for him an important 
lawsuit, for which he instantly gave him his freedom. He 
came to Philadelphia and amassed a great fortune in landed 
estate, now of great value among his heirs."* 

The case of Lord Altham, who was enticed aboard a 
ship at Dublin by an inhuman uncle and sent to this country 
in 1728, when a lad of thirteen, and who served out his 
term of servitude as James Annesley with a farmer on the 
Lancaster road, forty miles from Philadelphia, is a curious 
and interesting recital. This true story furnished the 
ground work for the once-popular novel "Roderick Ran- 
dom." The Annesley family, to which this high-born re- 
demptioner belonged, is the same from which the celebrated 
John Wesley was descended by his mother. 

James Annesley was the son of Arthur Annesley (Lord 
Altham), who married Mary Sheffield, natural daughter of 
the Earl of Buckingham. The son was born in 171 5, and 
the next year the parents disagreed and separated. The 
father, contrary to the wish of the mother, took possession 
of the child, and manifested much fondness for him until 
he formed an alliance with a Miss Gregory in 1722, at 
which time the mother died. The father was persuaded to 
place the boy at school in Dublin. Five years later, Lord 
Altham died and his brother Richard, wishing to possess the 
estate and title, proceeded to get rid of the boy. He had 
him enticed on board an American vessel which sailed from 
Dublin in April, 1728. This vessel reached Philadelphia, 
and the boy James Annesley (heir to the title and estates 
of Lord Altham) was sold as a redemptioner, being then 
but thirteen years old. He served twelve years, or until 



*The general effects of white servitude were much the same in all 
the colonies, but the influence on internal development was more clear- 
ly marked in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In Pennsyl- 
vania the large number of German settlers who had been driven from 
home by religious or political persecution, became the most valued of 
citizens. Kahn, in his "Travels." says they sold themselves to learn 
the language or methods of agriculture. 



39 

1/40, when a chance acquaintance led to his return home 
the following year. Two Irishmen, John and William 
Broders, travelling- westward from Philadelphia on the 
Lancaster road in 1740, stopped at a house "near the forty 
milestone." where James Annesley was in service with an 
old German. These three men entered into conversation 
and found that all were from Dumaine, in the county of 
Wexford, Ireland, and that James Annesley was none other 
than the long lost son of Lord Altham. The two Broders 
volunteered to go hack to Ireland and testify to their dis- 
covery in Pennsylvania. James Annesley stated his case to 
Robert Ellis, a Philadelphia lawyer, who procured for him 
a passage to Admiral Vernon, then in the West Indies, by 
whom he was afterward landed in London. Unfortunately, 
shortly after his arrival in London. James Annesley quar- 
reled and in self defence killed a man, for which he had to 
stand trial. Notwithstanding the efforts of his unnatural 
uncle to have him convicted of deliberate murder. James 
was acquitted. Suit was then ( 1743) brought against the 
uncle to recover his father's estates, and the two Irishmen 
from Pennsylvania were present as witnesses. Judgment 
was given in favor of the redemptioner. The uncle, how- 
ever, appealed to the House of Lords and while the case 
was pending, James Annesley died, leaving his uncle, a fin- 
ished villain, in quiet possession of his ill-gotten estate and 
title. 

Occasionally the positions of master and servant were re- 
versed. The latter, on obtaining his freedom, would rent 
land and by dint of prudence and industry become in time a 
freeholder. His sons would marry the daughters of his 
former master, and there are families in New [ersev to- 
day, reputable and rich, whose ancestry goes hack to the 
days ot servitude, whose progenitors were bond-servants, 
whose inherited seal is the "L. S." on a bond of indenture 
and whose only coat of arms is an axe and grubbing hoe, 
a pick and a spade ! 



FEB 21 1903 

40 



BEGINNING OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN NEW YORK. 
[See pp. 5-8 of this Monograph.] 
The first negro slaves brought to Manhattan Island were eleven in 
number. The date of their coming is fixed by an act of the Director 
and Council of New Netherland, passed February 25, 1644, which re- 
cites that Paul D' Angola and ten others, who had served the West In- 
dia Company for eighteen or nineteen years, having petitioned to be 
liberated, the Director and Council had granted their request, on condi- 
tion that their children then born should remain in bondage, and that 
they themselves should "pay for the freedom they receive, each man for 
himself annually, as long as he lives, to the West India Company or 
its deputy here, thirty skepels [barn baskets, each containing three 
pecks, or 22 y 2 bushels in all] of Maize or Wheat Pease or Beans and 
one Fat Hog, valued at twenty guilders [$8]." 

In 1628, two years after the arrival of Paul D' Angola and his com- 
panions, three negro women slaves arrived, and from this small begin- 
ning began the slavery system which existed in New York until 1827. 

In September, 1664, New Amsterdam was invaded by the English, 
to whom the province of New Netherland was surrendered. Peter 
Stuyvesant's register of events attending this attack says: "The Eng- 
lish chased and overhauled a boat with negroes belonging to the Burgo- 
masters of the city of Amsterdam, in Holland, but the negroes had fled 
with a Dutchman to the wo. ids." 

The West India Company passed severe criticism on the conduct of 
Stuyvesant in making so poor a defence of New Amsterdam. In his 
answer to the States-General, in 1666, Stuyvesant says, in accounting 
for the limited food supply, which was one of the causes of the sur- 
render: "About fourteen to sixteen days before the arrival of the Eng- 
lish frigates, there arrived and came in the ship Gideon, between 300 
and 400 half-starved negroes and negresses, who alone, exclusive of the 
garrison, required 100 skepels [seventy-five bushels] of wheat per week." 
Instead of the little plots of land along the east and west shores of 
the Hudson, which the Dutch permitted each slave to cultivate on his 
own account, the English gave them pious injunctions. Piety indeed 
reigned all through the English slave holding. As early as 1660 the 
English government gave these instructions to the Council for foreign 
plantations : "You are most especially to take an effectual care for the 
propogacon of the Gospell in the Several! Forraine Plantacons. * * 
* And you are to consider how such of the Natives or such as are 
purchased by you from other parts to be servants or slaves may be best 
invited to the Christian Faith, and be made capable of being baptized 
thereunto." 

There was a difficulty attending the conversion and baptism of 
slaves, however. The belief existed here, as elsewhere, that the con- 
version of a slave emancipated him, and this fact was a great hindrance 
to evangelization. Attorney-General York, of England, had said that 
negroes, being pagans, might be held in slavery. The British courts 
followed this opinion until 1772. when Lord Mansfield rendered his 
judgment, in the case of a negro named Somerset, that as soon as a 
negro set his foot on the soil of the British Islands, he became free. 
As late as 1817, when the last important act in regard to slavery was 
passed in New York, which substantially abolished slavery in that State 
after July 4, 1827, it was enacted that the marriage of slaves should be 
valid, "provided that nothing in this section contained shall be deemed 
or construed to manumit any such slave or slaves." 



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